


Those brilliant eyes in you

by Crazyamoeba



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Anger, Codependency, M/M, Possessive Behavior, Possessive Will Graham, Post-Fall (Hannibal), Unhealthy Relationships, Will Graham has anger issues
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-08-27
Updated: 2017-08-27
Packaged: 2018-12-20 16:35:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,463
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11924865
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Crazyamoeba/pseuds/Crazyamoeba
Summary: Some mornings, Will is afraid to open his eyes and see.If he opens his eyes, if he looks at what he has done, what he has won, and what he now has, he is afraid that it will all melt away.Hannibal is nothing if not pragmatic.





	Those brilliant eyes in you

Sometimes, Hannibal tells him 'no', and on those occasions, there is no force known to either God or man that could staunch his all-consuming rage. It burnt through every cell in his being from the inside-out, and then spilt from his mouth, eyes and ears to light everything in its wake.

A scorched earth policy that could never be contained, but then again, Hannibal has always enjoyed throwing the match and sitting back to watch everything burn. And Will, despite all his efforts towards good intentions, had grown fond of watching Hannibal's flames dance, reflected in his eyes.

This morning, it had taken one of Hannibal's greater efforts to convince Will that opening his eyes was not going to cause his whole world, delicately held behind jealous lids, to collapse before him.

In the few seconds that it took for the world to take shape around Will's skin, he remembered what it was that he must have from life now, and he decided that opening his eyes and trying to take it was just too much of a risk.

In fact, the only sensible and sane course of action was to close his eyes and wait for the world to stop turning.

Will was convinced that if it continued to spin, everything that he had come to need and reach for with grasping, shredded nails, would simply slip off the edge and disappear.

Better not to reach, then. Better to simply stay, ever so still and quiet, unmoving and barely drawing breath until the world stopped spinning.

 

//////////////////

 

“What is it that you want, Will?”

The words are soft and calm, carrying the weight of no expectations and all the comforting, crushing pressure that shaped them and held them firm against anything on the outside.

Will's breath shuddered, damp and crumbling against the pillow as he felt the shape of Hannibal hunker beside his bed, not touching, waiting patiently. Examining, the weight of his eyes professional and assessing, and burning with everything else.

“Everything.” Will allowed into the pillow. He squeezed his eyes shut at the shameful admission of eternal greed.

“Everything you have and anything you've ever wanted. Everything until you have nothing left.”

His words are weak, warbled into fresh and freshly-stained sheets. He clenches his fists against the cotton, feels his chest growl for something that he already had because it still wasn't enough.

“Nothing in your life that isn't me.”

Will wishes he could open his eyes to see the soft and utterly graceless pride on Hannibal's lips. 

Will would never tire of drinking in the man's usual, barely-breathing dusting of smiles. Expressions so small and quiet, but on a face as controlled as Hannibal's, they still struck that place in his guts just as keenly as they had the first time Will had seen one in a darkened motel room in the middle of a desert wasteland.

He hadn't seemed the type for smiling, let alone such fleeting things that they must be genuine, let alone directed at someone like Will. 

They still make him want to reach into those eyes and grasp the strings that make them and gently tug and pull.

They still make him feel like drawing breath may be more than just a necessity when he sees them aimed at him.

But a full and guileless smile on Hannibal's face was one of the things that made Will afraid to open his eyes when he woke. Because they are so horrifyingly beautiful and borne from all the wrong reasons which will only ever be right to the two of them, and Will needs those smiles to remind him that monsters can love each other and it doesn't make it any more likely that everything will fall apart.

He tries to remind himself that there will always be monster-hunters, regardless of whether Hannibal smiles at him like that or not.

He doesn't always succeed and on those days, he prefers not to tempt fate by opening his eyes and allowing himself to take what can absolutely never run out.

“You have always had those things, Will.” He closes his eyes tighter as the soft words brush his lashes. He wants so fiercely to open them, but they are the only things keeping Hannibal's voice to himself. If he opens them, he may lose everything to that old childhood adage.

It's good to share, William.

“There will never be a time when you will not have them, when I will not bend my every design to further your own.”

A large hand settles, carefully but not at all softly, against the nape of his neck.

“But at this very moment, Will, I would very much like to know how you wish to start the day.” The edges of the words are rounded by a smile, one which Will feels on his skin as they ghost across his face.

He wants to be angry that Hannibal is making this into a joke. But the gentle weight behind the words, the firm grip on his neck, the thumb stroking his pulse point....none of this has ever been a joke to Hannibal, and Will resents how the accusation makes him feel sol childish. 

“You cannot spend all day pretending that you do not see.”

There are gentle hands on him, urging him up from his prone position with such ease and comfort with another warm, living body that it suddenly becomes impossible to forget that, first and foremost, Hannibal had been a doctor. 

His breath shudders like the last, wet gasp of one dying, and his last orgasm.

That had been with Molly.

He recoils from the thought harder than he had ever flinched from those revived, choking cadavers with the cloudy eyes and the frantic breaths, whispering their last secrets.

Molly had whispered.

Hannibal had whispered, too.

“There is life outside the chrysalis after all, and if you are to simply close your eyes and stop your ears to it, then one must wonder why you fought so very hard to rip and tear through its walls.”

Hannibal, Will supposes, had whispered just that little bit louder.

On some days that Will refuses to term either his good or bad ones, he almost believes that loud whispers were the only thing to blame.

“Why-” Will is choking, suffocating on rage and grief and other, much less unpleasant, much less grey areas that he refuses to acknowledge, and the fact that Hannibal has won again, won everything that Will has to give, even if it is something as small as opening his eyes, it takes something from him. Something that he didn't even realise that he had left to give.

“Why can't you just let me have this?” The words feel like thorns ripping the edges of his mouth. He hopes they cut Hannibal's face as he rams his lips against the man's cheek. Butts his head against his jaw, feels the jolt of bone and the ease with which Hannibal allows his head to move with Will's aggression.

The ease of one who knows he has won, will always win.

“Why-” The words dry up at the back of his teeth, and he groans, growling and baying like a wounded animal against Hannibal's throat. Smears his lips against the warm, slightly stubbled skin.

Hannibal's hands cradle his skull. His lips curve in a gentle smile against Will's scalp.

Will renews his own grip on Hannibal's face. Urges his fingers closer to those bottomless eyes.

“Why do you always want what I have to give?” His hands tremble with the pressure they exert on Hannibal's cheeks. His thumbs judder in the space beneath his eyes. His whisper is wet and loose, and for a moment, he can smell his father's favourite whisky, and he forces his thumbs deeper.

Presses his lips against Hannibal's ear.

“Why can't you ever say no?” Tremulous and imparted softly and devoutly into the man's skin, it is as close to praying as Will can come now.

He had never truly believed that anyone heard his fervent, childhood mutterings, even at the time. 

They had only ever floated to the rafters and got stuck up there with the dust, congealing in the heat of uniform southern churches.

Hannibal is warm, and here, and he most definitely hears. 

Because he is holding Will's face, up and away from his own, and suddenly the fact that he has forced Will's eyes open merely by whispering against them, through them, doesn't matter at all.

Because he can see the echo of the words in Hannibal's own surface-still gaze.

He can see the man beckoning softly, summoning the memories of Will's ripping, his tearing.

His becoming.

He can see them through Hannibal's eyes. And through them, it is beautiful.

**Author's Note:**

> Title is taken from a Baudelaire poem called (translated) 'The Living Torch', because I am pretentious trash, and I thought it was weirdly fitting, in a twisted, Hannibal kind of fashion.


End file.
